The Orange County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office has come under fire recently due to allegations of an illegal jailhouse informant program.
Public Corruption
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced last week that Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford has been charged with illegally receiving more than $60,000 a year from local consultants Kimberly Anne Shaw and Susan Burgess Miller and failing to disclose the income on economic statements.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported on an ongoing battle between the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the deputies’ union.
Last month, the Supreme Court granted former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s request to hear his case. McDonnell was convicted in 2014in federal district court, along with his wife, for intervening with state officials on behalf of a political supporter who had contributed close to $180,000 in loans, vacations, and luxury goods to the former governor.
On July 2, 2015, the Sarawak Report, a UK-based online media source covering environmental politics in Sarawak, Malaysia, published an article accusing the Prime Minister of Malaysia—NajibRazak—of receiving nearly $700 million of deposits in his personal account from monies related to a state investment fund.
The widely-publicized corruption scandal in a small California city has led to a lengthy prison sentence for the former city manager at the center of the scheme. Robert Rizzo, the former city manager of Bell, California, was sentence to 12 years in state prison for his role in a public corruption scheme. He was also ordered to pay $8.8 million in restitution.
We recently discussed the public corruption charges leveled against California State Senator Ron Calderon. In particular, Sen. Calderon is accused of accepting bribes.
When a corruption scandal breaks, it can be difficult for the public to keep in mind that all persons are considered innocent until proven guilty. Especially when an elected official is brought up on charges of public corruption, the public's instinct can be to judge first and wait for actual evidence to be properly brought forward only after the affected individual is already condemned in their minds.
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